Christmas Cookies-Gifts for the Embassies
With Thanksgiving holiday coming to a close, that means one thing!….. Christmas Cookies!
Every year, I still wait in excitement to make traditional Christmas cookies for friends and family. More excitingly, this will be the second year I’ll be participating in donating some special creations for gifts to the embassies located in D.C. and offices in NYC.
I’ll be teaming up with other bakers to make this another successful and fun year in spreading some holiday joy and cheer; cookie style.
20 dozen
250 is my goal of the number of cookies I’ll bake. Variety is my launching point to bring in various holiday colors and themes for some new designs and colors.
Here are some of my designs from last year.
Starting early, I use my favorite sugar cookie recipe to cut out many shapes and sizes up ahead of time. These can be baked and frozen so they are ready to decorate.
Focusing on a 2″ square and 2″ circle as the base of most of the designs. As well as, adding a simple star, snowflake, and Christmas Tree’s to round out the 20 dozen.
Christmas Cookie Ideas
Narrowing it down, these are the designs I choose:
- Christmas Gifts
- Snowflakes
- Wreaths
- Stars
- Christmas Trees
This year, I’m trying a chocolate sugar cookie roll out dough for snowflakes and gingerbread men, instead of traditional gingerbread.
2019 Designs
Today, I’ll be delivering the cookies and and excited and honored that they will be enjoyed by so many.
Here is a collage of the cookies for this year!
Christmas Trees
Here I decided to go traditional with some green Christmas Cookie trees but also, with a new look combining white and red to make a really neat color combination. I really love this new look.
Snowflake Snow Globe
Love this simple snowflake cookie and the colors. Reminds me of a snowy day and a snow globe. These cookies are simply cut with a 2″ round scalloped cutter, decorated with light blue royal icing and white accents. And of course, sprinkles!
Starlight, Starbright
Every season, I love to incorporate a “star” into my Christmas cookie collection. This year I decided to go simple, but fun. A simple glaze of yellow icing and a drizzle with white bring these guys alive and just warm your heart up with joy!
Christmas Wreaths
Beautiful wreaths, one of my favorite Christmas decorations. I definitely wanted to highlight this in one of my designs this year. Just love how easy these were to make and equally love the way they turned out.
Jelly Jams
Jam filled cookies are such a great memory of growing up. My mother would always make jam thumbprints every Christmas. Yum! They are one of my favorites of all time. Here, these are inspirations from those memories.
I use some neat cutters that make the well for the jam to be filled with on these thumbprints in the shapes of circles and rectangles. They get a thin drizzle of melted vanilla almond bark.
Of course, you can’t talk about a jam cookie without thinking of the great linzer cookies. I remember first making these, I was completely in love after eating a few of them. They totally remind me of Christmas and definitely up there in one of my favorite Christmas cookies.
Both of these cookies are filled with raspberry jam but any jam here works perfectly!
Red Gift Boxes
Square lends its shape to a gift box, so this cookie is a reflection of that. Bringing in some fun colors to make it look bright and merry.
Together, these make a fun Christmas cookie collection filled with holiday colors.
Chocolate Snowflakes
Every cookie collection needs a little chocolate, in my humble opinion 🙂 I tried a chocolate roll out dough to make these snowflake cookies and use royal icing to accent. The look of the white against the brown cookie really makes it pop.
Special Tip
When baking for the holidays, the freezer is truly your friend. In order to bake such large quantities of Christmas Cookies there are two strategies that I like to use:
- Bake and freeze undecorated cookies
- Freeze fully decorated cookies
This makes it easy to bake up ahead of time and the freezer keeps the cookies super fresh. I freeze undecorated cookies in freezer bags. Also, I like to bake all the cookies up first and freeze them. Gradually, I’ll decorate them by their design.
The fully decorated cookies get placed in single layers, separated by parchment paper and sealed in an airtight container. These cookies can stay fresh for weeks.
Simply remove them from the freezer a few hours before you want to enjoy them.
I hope everyone who enjoys them is filled with the wonderful magical Christmas/Holiday spirit.
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